I'm the Boss

For some reason, I have had the urge to write more than draw in the past week and a half which is rare for me so I'll embrace it for now because I have hours upon hours of illustrating ahead of me in the next few weeks. It should be the most busy time of my short illustrating career with Christmas approaching, a new line of gals going in the shop and my show this Thursday. This past weekend I had made the choice to slow it all down a bit for my sanity and it was beautiful. I want to enjoy this if at all possible. I wasn't quite making that an option when I was illustrating into the wee hours of the morning and cranking out a drawing a day. That is the beauty of being the boss, you get to do it your own way. You can mess up and it's your fault or you can work too hard and it's still your fault. Obviously, we are all a part of both categories, but I've always been the type of person to see the beauty in mistakes and find the silver lining (except for that one time they printed my entire bulk order on the wrong paper...there was no beauty in that). I struggle more with the latter category and I blame it on my blood. I was born into a family where you are taught that if you don't have what you want, you simply aren't working hard enough and even if you do have what you want, you could still find a way to work harder. I have a love/hate relationship with this attitude that has been engraved in my mind. On the one hand, it has brought me further than I could've ever imagined in almost every aspect of my life, but I am never satisfied with anything I produce or accomplish. This is dangerous as an artist. Something I am constantly working on is talking about my work with confidence. I often catch myself stumbling over my words when I am trying to explain what I do to people. Sometimes I take the shortcut and leave out fashion illustrator all together and just answer nanny because people can picture that job in their head. I have no idea what I would say to someone in an artist statement. To be completely honest, when I think artist, I do not think of myself. If I break it down into simpler terms it makes much more sense to me. When I was recently chatting with a friend about all this stuff I'm writing about, I figured it out. He asked me, "What's next? Ideally, what do you want to be doing with your illustrations?" I answered modestly, I guess it would be cool if I could illustrate for bloggers, clothing companies and sell products with my drawing on them. It took me a second but I followed that with, "I am doing exactly what I want to be doing." He tricked me. He's smarter than I am, but I will forever treasure that conversation.